An awesome Amazon Yule

Online giant’s be$t ever

AMAZON IS feeling the holiday cheer. The company said it shipped more than 1 billion items worldwide this holiday season — a massive volume the top online retailer called its best ever — and its shares rose 1.6% in afternoon trading Tuesday.

The Amazon Echo home assistant and its smaller version, Echo Dot, topped the best-sellers list, Jeff Wilke, chief executive of Amazon’s worldwide consumer division, said in a statement. “Despite our best efforts and ramped-up production, we still had trouble keeping them in stock.” Sales of voice-controlled Echo devices were nine times greater than they were during last year’s holiday season, the company said, though it’s difficult to know exactly what that means. Amazon did not disclose comparable sales figures from a year earlier.

“It’s all relative to other numbers that they’ve never told us,” said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research. Amazon likely sold between 4 million and 5 million devices this year to date with Alexa, the voice-controlled assistant on the Echo, according to an estimate by Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy. Shoppers can command the Echo to perform a host of tasks, from playing music to turning on Christmas lights.

More than 72% of Amazon’s customers worldwide shopped through mobile devices, the company added, and Dec. 19 was the busiest shopping day this holiday season.

Other best sellers on Amazon included 72-pack Keurig K-Cups, the movie “Finding Dory,” Samsung Electronics’ Gear VR virtual reality headset and Nintendo’s Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon role-playing video games, the company said.